I'm kicking some SCP ideas around in the dust and was wondering if anyone here has the gall to write an SCP based on an existing tale or idea. I know that SCPs should be as novel as possible. Thoughts on this?

If you've ever heard of Mel's Hole (and the Art Bell shows surrounding it) then you'll know what I'm talking about. That story is an SCP in and of itself, but it is by no means original.

I didn't bother watching the entire youtube movie, but after checking with Wikipedia about Mel's Hole, it appears to simply be about an infinitely deep hole with paranormal properties. In addition to SCP-1437 and SCP-1986, there has been at least one other infinite hole SCP that has since been deleted.

Whats different about this is the specific events related to the location that have already been intimately described, and I would basically be translating that experience exactly as it was originally told. I just want to know if that is ok for an SCP.

We are not going to be able to tell you that without a draft. This has become a circular discussion; either give us a draft we can properly critique or go do whatever it is you're planning to do anyways. You aren't going to get some magical form of pre-approval out of this forum.

We don't really know if it'll be okay for an SCP because it largely depends on how you execute said SCP! But we can't judge your idea on its merits alone either, because the execution of an SCP idea is one of the biggest factors in workable SCPs!

SO, IN SIMPLEST TERMS:

YES, YES IT IS OKAY. EVERYTHING IS OKAY. GO. WRITE. WE CAN JUDGE PROPERLY WHEN YOU GET BACK. HAVE A NICE DAY.

LOL… ok everyone. Let me clarify something: I don't care if it's a good idea or not. I just want to know if, in general, basing an SCP on an already-written story that people have already heard of is frowned upon. You're all a little too caught up on the idea that I'm looking for your approval of this particular idea. That is simply not the case! Sorry if I misled you…and thanks for the insight!

It depends on the "story" in question. But as has been stated before, it depends on execution.

If by "already-written story" you mean a mainsite tale that mentions an unlisted SCP, it would be a very good idea to get permission from the author of the tale first and have a draft ready. If it has the author's blessing and is well-executed, I can't see something like that going badly.

If you mean something that has already been written outside of the Foundation site, I'd advise against it. I'm not sure what the official policy is, but I can't see anyone discouraging the formation of unique ideas using one's own imagination. My personal take is that an SCP sort of loses some of its impact if the first thing I think while reading the article is "hey, that's sounds like xx from xx".

Why not go through some SCP based on legend and lore articles and the feedback on them yourself?

In case you're interested, this story was not ever written or sold by an author. It is a personal testimony from a man named Mel Waters who insists the anomaly is real, and the events surrounding it really happened. He was a guest on the radio show Art Bell back in 2002 and told his story and swore all of it was true. It would be the perfect backbone of an SCP. That's basically it, in a nutshell. I would alter certain aspects and characters in the story and replace them with Foundation elements.

The story is pretty obscure. I'm confident that no one who reads it would recognize the reference.

Thanks for the links — I will definitely read those. Sorry again for the confusion!

If you're suggesting that you plan to just write "Mel's Hole" as an SCP, I'd advise against it as well. There's a big difference between writing an SCP inspired by an established legend, and just writing the legend without adding anything new. If all you're doing is taking a story the reader is already familiar with and shoehorning it into SCP format, it's not going to be very interesting and it's likely to get downvotes. To cite a particularly infamous example, Duke is pretty much just a straight presentation of a vampire in the Stoker/Rice/Brown tradition as an SCP - and that's probably part of the reason why his decomm tale is one of the highest-rated tales on the site.

Re your suggestion that Mel's Hole is an "obscure" legend, here's what another poster had to say in the comments thread for the article where I referenced it;

I don't care for the Mel's Hole reference, though. Too obvious. Like, let's throw Mel's Hole in there because that particular urban legend hasn't been run into the ground! (This partly stems from my history as a script reader circa 2009, when apparently the coolest idea evar was apparently to do a spec script on Mel's Hole and I got so sick of that crap.)

So bear that in mind. If you have your heart set on writing a Mel's Hole SCP, for the love of 343, don't just regurgitate Art Bell. Give us something we haven't seen before, take it in a new direction. Ask yourself, "What direction can I take a magic bottomless pit in that makes sense, hasn't been seen before, and will intrigue the reader?"

I'm not interested in the hole story from 1999. That's the famous "Mel's Hole" story that everyone knows already. I'm talking about the much lesser-known hole story from 2002: He was introduced to another hole by natives in Wyoming (or something.) It had a huge metal ring around it, as if something was supposed to connect with it from above. The metal made no noise when hit with a hammer, somehow absorbing all lateral force. They sent all sorts of things down the hole and they came back up with weird properties: they lowered a sheep down and it came back up "cooked." A tumor had grown inside the body cavity and had a creature inside it…